LOOK: Imagine yourself here in Manila’s empty streets!

Pictures allow one to speak a thousand words but with this photo set, I have none except for one – glorious.

On the rarest occasions where we find empty streets of Metro Manila, Everywhere We Shoot duo Ryan and Garovs Vergara captured moments of the uncongested roads through a photoset they uploaded on their Facebook page. To the delight of many Filipino citizens, especially residents of the metropolitan capital, the post as reached a thousand likes and shares.

When in Manila has reached out to Ryan for further details.

When in Manila: “Everywhere We Shoot” is run by a partnership. How did you guys start, and where are you guys based?

Ryan: EVERYWHERE WE SHOOT is just my wife and I. We are based in Manila; we do photography and graphic design. We created a web portfolio in 2005, sent emails out to local and international publications about our work, then luckily thru that we started getting commissions to do shoots and graphic design. [We were] both obsessed with magazines and irony; working together just happened naturally. [We were] both trained at the De La Salle – College of St. Benilde’s School of Design & Arts where I was a Multimedia Arts major and Garovs was in Fashion Design and Merchandising. [We started] in 2005 as photographers. As graphic designers, we’ve been commissioned to do branding and web design, record sleeves, packaging design for top Filipino artists and designers. We’ve established an inimitable style through photography, fashion, and graphic design – characteristically ironic and playful and always with a hint of humor. We simplify the complicatedand exaggerate the basics. Lately, EVERYWHERE WE SHOOT‘s works have become more progressive, as we started experimenting with different types of media.

WIM: What camera/s do you use, and if possible, photo editor/s?R: For thisphotoset, we used our Sony RX1R MII and edited it using our iPhone7Plus + VSCOx.

WIM: For the “Imagine Yourself Here” photo set, what’s the story behind it? Like, did you expect empty streets on Good Friday; did you purposely wait for a “Holy day” to capture bare streets of Manila, etc?R: Ever since we start shooting, we’ve been going around taking pictures everywhere together. Instead of going where we planned to go, we tend to go off path and take the long way around.

We woke up late on Good Friday, we wanted to go out and do something before 3PM, because every Filipino child knows, that when 3PM hits on a Good Friday, that meant no life, no playing, no shouting, no being happy. So we grabbed our cameras and rode in our car not sure where we were going.

We didn’t plan on taking pictures of the empty Manila. We were just excited to test our new cameras and get to freely shoot around Manila. Normally, we focus on finding life in ordinary subjects, the sky, streets, grocery aisles, trash, old houses, walls, debris, plants, etc, but this time, we were taken aback and were hyping each other, laughing and at times, screaming at each other, all about how beautiful our city was. We were so pumped that we even had to stop at a random panaderia to buy water. Aside from the streets, we have a series of houses and buildings that look like production sets because of the absence of cars, people, even street cats and dogs. If we could share with you what our eyes exactly saw, how the sunlight hit the roads, how everything was glowing, all out of the ordinary. We just kept driving, not knowing where we would end up, turning whenever we saw traffic build ups.

There were still some cars around, but we were lucky to be at the right place at the right time. There were still some cars of course, so some of our photos were taken facing backwards, some were taken while waiting for a bunch of cars to pass.

Such a sight it is to see a traffic free Metro Manila! We hope to see more of these soon in the future!

What do you think of this story? Let us know in the comments below!

Disclaimer: WheninManila.com does not own these photos. Photo credits go to Ryan and Garovs of Everywhere We Shoot. You can view the entire photo set here.

A mixture of sugar, spice and everything nice, Ysabel is a Senior Features Editor on WheninManila.com. A former competitive figure skater and cheerleader, she is also a contributing writer for the Philippine Daily Inquirer - To Be You, a brand ambassador, an online influencer and a motivational speaker. Catch this wandering soul's musings at YsabelVitangcol.com.

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